Welcome to the District Brand Bar

Reader, I'm back from Boise, where Kit's Craft + Commerce put several hundred entrepreneurs in one room for three days, and every single one of them was making a brand impression whether they meant to or not. I watched all of it, experimented myself, and I'm breaking it down with receipts. 1. Signature brands show up. Generic ones fade. "I bottle solopreneurs' brilliance into Signature Brands that are unmistakable, remembered, and the obvious choice in the room, and I do it with a cocktail...

Reader, I'm writing this from Boise, Idaho, where I'm about to walk into the Kit Craft + Commerce Conference tonight as an official YouTuber! I designed the backdrop, planned the strategy, figured out CapCut. It's real. My show, Brand Bar Sessions, is live and there are three episodes up for you to binge. And they are all short (4 to 7 minutes) and designed to make you look at your brand a little differently. Starting next week, new episodes drop every Thursday. Here's what's already waiting...

I have 2 spots open in June! Reader, Four things change when your brand finally does its job. 🍾 Your content takes half the time. 🍾Your referrals start selling themselves. 🍾The right clients find you. 🍾Your decisions stop spiraling. The Signature Brand Edit is built to deliver all four. And I have two spots open in June that are waiting for you to fill! It's one focused half-day where I build your entire brand operating system with you. It starts with the Dossier, my homework on who you are...

Reader, Every summer, without fail, I have found a way to make things harder for myself. It became a tradition I never asked for. June would roll around, I'd look at my business, and suddenly I'd see the thing that needed fixing before fall. One summer it was my membership structure. Another summer it was the platform. (The platform was not the problem.) One particularly ambitious June I decided the whole thing needed to be rebuilt from scratch, which is a completely rational conclusion that...

Reader,This is a story all about how our weekend got turned upside down... With the Memorial Day weekend washout on the East Coast, Brian and I scratched our cabin plans and decided to finally tackle a project we'd been putting off: custom built-ins for our den. I had a brilliant idea. I would use Claude to build the full project plan. Shopping list, cut list with every dimension, pricing from Home Depot, step-by-step instructions. It was impressive. Brian has always been an AI skeptic. I...

Reader, Sometimes I picture my brain on the couch. Wrapped in a soft blanket, a glass of wine on the side table and reading something thoughtful to stay sharp. But mostly it's cozy and doesn't want to get up. I'm not talking about being lazy myself (though I LOVE my blue couch blanket). But my brain loves to stay it's safe zone, chilling on the couch as I go about my day. The problem is, running a business does not let my brain stay there. I'm constantly having to push myself (and my brain)...

Reader, Your brand needs an operating system. 🤯 Right now your brand is a bunch of assets. Fonts, colors, key messages, your website, etc. Even your brand book that you use to train AI is still, at the end of the day, just a PDF asset. It's like a bar that's stocked with all the right bottles, but no tools to turn that into crafted cocktails. Sure, you can make a gin and tonic or a rum and coke. But I want more for your brand. You deserve the tools to make a shaken margarita and a stirred...

Reader, When I go to Trader Joe's, I barely look at my list anymore. Every week I'm grabbing pretty much the same things: the garlic spread, the bruschetta sauce, the chili lime grilled chicken, the power greens. Brian knows that if we're down to one bottle of Campari or the Aperol is running low, he's grabbing more on his way home from work. We know what we like and what we always reach for, so I can walk into that store and just move. And my cart will look completely different than anyone...

Stepping into my Signature Brand era last year gave me clarity I hadn't had in 25 years of brand and marketing. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Help business owners bottle their brilliance to create a signature brand that stands out, markets easier, attracts better clients, and scales with less friction. I now have this throughline. The bigger question I keep coming back to is how someone holds on to their signature brand over the long run, because anyone can have one for a season....